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ijcd The International Journal of Controversial Discussions Psychoanalysis in the 21st Century I Issue One • March 2020 We very pleased to be able to send to our subscribers M this first issue of our new on-line e-journal, the International Journal of Controversial Discussions. We recognize that the subject of this issue “Psychoanalysis: Art or Science” is very much removed from our most urgent concerns today. What are uppermost in our minds today are this terrible pandemic, the safety of our loved ones, and protecting ourselves from the virus. With this in mind, our hope is that the papers in this issue will provide interesting reading for those times when we are not directly taking care of our families, our patients, and ourselves. I Masthead Arnold D. Richards, Editor-in-Chief Ahron Friedberg, Managing Editor Elizabeth Ronis, Business Manager Jane Hall, Book Review Editor Editorial Board John S. Auerbach Anna Migliozzi Sheldon Bach Jon Mills Francis Baudry Merle Molofsky Daniel Benveniste Trevor Pederson James Tyler Carpenter Rosina Pineyro Selma Duckler Mark Poster Maaike Engelen Burton Seitler Ahron Friedberg Neal Spira Henry Friedman Nathan Szajnberg Jane Hall Susan Warshaw Susan Kavaler-Adler Brent Willock Gilbert Kliman Stefan R. Zicht Ricardo Lombardi I Subscribe to The IJCD at ijcd.internationalpsychoanalysis.net ©2020 The International Journal of Controversial Discussions All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission of the authors. icd The International Journal of Controversial Discussions Psychoanalysis in the 21st Century I Issue One • March 2020 Introduction Arnold D. Richards 1 Psychoanalysis as Art and Science Daniel Benveniste—Introduction— Musings on the question Is Psychoanalysis a Science or an Art? 2 Art and Science Section 13 Bob Bergman 13 Margaret Crastnopol—Discussant 19 Robert Bergman—Response 24 Lucy Biven 25 Susan Kavaler-Adler—Discussant 44 Lucy Biven—Response 55 Gerald J. Gargiulo 59 Merle Molofsky—Discussant 63 Gerald J. Gargiulo—Response 66 Jeffrey H. Golland 68 Leonie Sullivan—Discussant 75 Rómulo Lander 81 Arthur Leonoff—Discussant 88 Rómulo Lander—Response 94 Zvi Lothane 96 Mehmet Sagman Kayatekin and Zerrin Emel Kayatekin—Discussants 110 Zvi Lothane—Response 115 Merle Molofsky 118 Kim Kleinman—Discussant 125 Austin Ratner 127 Mark Poster—Discussant 136 Marco Conci—Discussant 142 Austin Ratner—Response 145 Arlene Kramer Richards 147 Adriana Prengler—Discussant 150 Science Needs Criticism: Debating the Clinical Aspects of Diverging Theoretical Schools Joseph Schachter, Judith Schachter and Horst Kachele 155 Zerrin Emel Kayatekin and Mehmet Sagman Kayatekin—Discussants 165 Joseph Schachter, Judith Schachter and Horst Kachele—Response 169 Lois Oppenheim Review of Neubauer Twin Study: An Interview about a Controversy or a Controversial Interview? Lois Oppenheim 171 Adam M. Kelmenson and Ilene Wilets—Discussants 189 Lois Oppenheim—Response 197 Nathan Szajnberg Review: The Emergence of Analytic Oneness: Into the Heart of Psychoanalysis by Ofra Eshel 202 Ofra Eshel—Discussant 207 Author Bios 212 I Introduction The IJCD, International Journal of Controversial Discussions, is a new online journal launching in March 2020 and will be distributed free by subscription. Our intention is to create a forum for discussion and de- bate about controversial issues within psychoanalysis among colleagues with a variety of different approaches. It will offer a meeting place for analysts with diverging theoretical and clinical attitudes whose paths might otherwise not cross. The theme of the first issue, which is edited by Daniel Benveniste, is the old question “Is Psychoanalysis a Science or an Art?” It includes eleven original contributions accompanied by discussions and some au- thors’ replies to the discussions. The IJCD is a journal of dialogue and we envision that the discussions begun in this issue will be continued in subsequent issues. We feel that this journal fills a need which is not addressed by many of the contemporary journals in the United States and abroad that tend to publish standalone papers with discussions and responses as the exception rather than the rule. The IJCD is an independent journal not affiliated with any national or international organization. The editorial board of distinguished scholars and clinicians includes former editors of other psychoanalytic journals. This journal is not peer-reviewed in the usual sense. The standard peer review practice is to send each submitted paper to a panel of readers whose names are not shared with the author of the paper. These readers write reviews which may be excerpted for the author and which form the basis for the acceptance or rejection the paper. In the IJCD model of peer review, well written and well-reasoned papers on a selected con- troversial topic are published. Each published paper is paired with a re- sponse by a discussant with a relevant interest. The author is also given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. The IJCD does not have any theoretical or ideological bias and will cast a wide net, including contributors from many disciplines and many geo- graphical locations. It will consider a broad array of subjects of interest to mental health professionals. The journal is a work in progress and we welcome input from the larger mental health community. –Arnold D. Richards, Editor-In-Chief 1 IJCD: International Journal of Controversial Discussions Issue 1 M Musings on the Question Is Psychoanalysis a Science or an Art? Daniel S. Benveniste The history of psychoanalysis is a history of controversial discussions that have provided a means of resolving problems or clarifying positions regarding theory, technique, and institutional power. Rather than creating yet another journal with a theoretical bias for like-minded theorists and clinicians to develop their ideas, this journal will take on controversial topics and create a forum for discussions between colleagues who specifically do not think alike. The intention here is to create a village square for discussion and debate about controversial issues. As the first topic to discuss, we have chosen the age-old question,Is psy- choanalysis a science or an art? If it is a science, what kind of a science is it? If it is an art, what kind of art is it? And if it’s not a science or an art, what else could it be? I open this issue of the International Journal of Controversial Discussions with a set of musings to orient the reader to some of the matters involved in such questions. The rest of this issue will be dedicated to distinguished psychoanalysts presenting their ideas in concise articles followed by other analysts responding to those articles. Sigmund Freud was born in 1856, three years before the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Darwin’s scientific breakthrough in- vigorated the sciences and influenced popular thinking about religion and politics. Freud grew up in this scientific movement that reshaped the views of self and society—specifically, in a shift away from a Judeo- Christian religious worldview to a scientific worldview. Freud followed these developments closely in high school and then at university. From April through October 1895, Freud penned an essay titled Project for a Scientific Psychology that began with the words “The intention is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science.” He went on: “that is, to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of specifiable material particles, thus making those processes 2 IJCD: International Journal of Controversial Discussions Issue 1 perspicuous and free from contradiction” (Freud, 1895/1966, SE 1, p. 295). Freud, the neurologist who had stained and studied neurons and explored hysteria through hypnosis with Jean-Martin Charcot, was trying to make sense of it all with his exceptional powers of observation and his synthetic theory-making mind. As James Strachey (1966) wrote in his introduction to the English trans- lation of Freud’s Project, “All emphasis in the picture here is upon the environment’s impact upon the organism and the organism’s reaction to it… The ‘instincts’ are only shadowy entities, with scarcely even a name” (p. 291). The technique of psychoanalysis is for the most part absent, and free association, interpretation of unconscious material, and trans- ference “are barely hinted at” (p. 291). Freud ultimately threw out this neurological framework, because, as Strachey wrote, “He found that his neuronal machinery had no means of accounting for what, in The Ego and the Id, he described as being ‘in the last resort our one beacon-light in the darkness of depth-psychology’—namely, ‘the property of being conscious or not’ ” (p. 293). Strachey ended his introduction by saying, “The Project must remain a torso, disavowed by its creator” (p. 293). While Freud dismissed this early work, and we can understand why, I see the Project as Freud’s Golem, a “being,” in a sense, who set the stage for all that was yet to come and was then dismissed. By 1913 everything had changed. The foundation of psychoanalysis had been established. And then, following the completion of Totem and Taboo, Freud wrote a small essay titled The Claims of Psycho-Analysis to Scientific Interest (1913/1955a). He did not ask if psychoanalysis was a science but instead demonstrated that other fields, including scientific fields, could be interested in psychoanalysis. In that essay he addressed